More about
Melic Sub Rosa
(Even more info at
MelicSubRosa.com)
Jeff plays double bass in Surrealestate, the Multi-Ethnic Star Orchestra, Rich West's Homunculus, and the Watts Ensemble. Jeff studies with David H. Young. Active in LA's avant-garde music scene, he has performed at events and venues including Line Space Line, the Open Gate and Lira concert series, Il Corral, Dangerous Curve, the Edgemar Center for the Arts, Disney Hall, 21 Grand, REDCAT, the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, LA Sound/Shift, the Long Beach Soundwalk, the Vancouver Jazz Festival, and the Silverlake Film Festival. He has given conference papers on music and cultural studies and published in journals and anthologies including American Music, Popular Music, Postmodern Culture, The Velvet Underground Companion, and A Basic Music Library. He was the first biographer of Albert Ayler and a consultant for Revenant Records' Grammy-nominated Holy Ghost box set. An adaptation of his dissertation on the politics of free jazz is under consideration at a major university press. Dr. Schwartz is currently a reference librarian at the Santa Monica Public Library.
In addition to Melic Sub Rosa, Darryl is a regular member of the Blueprint Ensemble and Sonic Wave Society, and is the founding member of the Los Angeles Audio Improvisation Lab in which he sometimes plays guitar and at other times bass. He has collaborated with hundreds of musicians in diverse genres, from hip-hop to classical, and periodically releases solo material under the name Brahmanista. Darryl has been a producer for music instruction video label MVP Home Entertainment and a recording engineer at Daryl Dragon's Rumbo Recorders. Darryl also serves as an information media consultant for a number of Los Angeles-based entertainment entities, including the American Film Institute and UMG.
A Venice, California native, Pat brings a wealth of influence inspired from the music of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Black Flag, Minutemen, and Swans, and drummers Tony Williams and Lenny White, to mention a few. In the mid 80's Pat was the drummer for Magnolia Thunderpussy, a high school band that earned a contract with legendary indie label SST. The band played on bills with Black Flag, Saccharine Trust, SWA, DC3, and Equidemious, and earned praise from the likes of Greg Ginn, Thurston Moore, and Flea. After MTP disbanded in the late 80's, Pat joined the Venice experimental jazz, free-form band Halfway to Cleveland with fellow SST-era veteran David Travis. Led by multi-instrumentalist and bandleader "Doc" (Griffin) Williams, HWTC found themselves collaborating in performances with Pat Smear (Germs, Foo Fighters) and comedian George Carlin before recording an album at the legendary studio "Radio Tokyo", owned by Blue Cheer bassist Ethan James. In the early 90's Pat joined again with MTP bassist David Jones, D. Travis, guitarist Jesse Engel and saxophonist Corey Wright to create the free-form outfit "Pipsqueak," an amalgam of the experimental composition style of free-form jazz, but with a darker, edgier and sonically dense sound. Pipsqueak recruited vocalist-poet George Murillo (Carnage Asada, Axis of Evil) to complete the ensemble's muscular "wall of sound." After a 2005 Pacific Northwest tour with a reformed MTP and a few years on hiatus, Pat joined MSR in April 2009 to replace original drummer David Strayer. When not playing drums, Pat works as an Information Systems Analyst for the County of Los Angeles.